1. A basic introduction to the textile machinery of the Industrial Revolution can be found in the following publications: Aspin, C.The Cotton Industry(Stroud: Shire Publications, 1981); Benson, A.Textile Machines(Stroud: Shire Publications, 1983); Benson, A. & N. Warburton,Looms and Weaving(Stroud: Shire Publications, 1995); Chapman, S.D.Hosiery and Knitwear: Four Centuries of Small-Scale Industry in Britain c. 1589–2000(Pasold Studies in Textile History, Oxford University Press, 2002). The great 20th-century historian of the Lancashire textile industry, Douglas Farnie, wrote a notable article on textile machine-makers which is still one of the key introductory texts to the subject: ‘Farnie, D. A., 1990, ‘The Textile Machine-making Industry and the World Market, 1870–1960’,Business History, 32.4, 150–65. Both the Romans and the Han Chinese appear to have used an early type of horizontal loom from the 3rd centuryADonwards (Wild, J.P. ‘The Roman Horizontal Loom’,American Journal of Archaeology, 91.3 (July 1987), 459–71). The earliest positive evidence for the spinning wheel is a series of 13th-century sketches from China, Europe and Syria, but clearly the technology was much older.
2. Hooke Robert,Micrographia: Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon(1665).
3. René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur,Memoires pour servir a l’histoire naturelle des insectes(published 1734 to 1742).
4. Wulfhorst B., Gries T. & Veit D.Textile Technology(Cincinatti, Ohio, USA: Hanser Publications, 2006).
5. Selling H.J.Twistless Yarns(Watford: Merrow Publishing, 1971); Sondhelm, W.S. ‘High Speed Automatic Weaving’, in F. Happey ed.Contemporary Textile Engineering(Academic Press, 1982), 289–340.